


Space Potatoes

by navyblueoveryou



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: F/F, Family Feels, Gen, Other, but i still like it enough to post it, i dont think this turned out how i wanted it to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:00:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25003531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navyblueoveryou/pseuds/navyblueoveryou
Summary: Ellie and Dina celebrate the holidays in their own way, and Ellie finds an old radio that plays cassette tapes.
Relationships: Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 204





	Space Potatoes

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not really sure what I was aiming for here. I had an idea to have Ellie share a moment with JJ, but also wanted to touch on the origins of Dina and Ellie calling him potato/spud/little potato. 
> 
> It's a smörgåsbord of family feels that I scribbled down in about 20 minutes. Hope you enjoy.
> 
> Also, I'm back on tumblr pretty much solely to see TLOU2 content. Find me here: https://dinaspapercrown.tumblr.com/
> 
> say hi! send prompts! I'm in between jobs right now so I have a lot of free time on my hands. And, as always, your feedback keeps me motivated. Thank you guys for all of the love so far. I'm so glad that dusting off my fanfic writing has been worth it to some of you.
> 
> Welcome to Earth!

"That smells like legitimate heaven," came Dina's voice from the other room. When Ellie looked up from the skillet, killing the heat in the process, she got a good look at the other woman, who was now leaning against the door frame with her hand resting against an ever-growing belly. Ellie had made the mistake of telling her that she looked like a balloon ready to pop a few days before.

She wouldn't be making that mistake again.

"Thought I'd make us something a little different," she said with a lopsided smile, and when Dina crept across the tiles of the kitchen floor, trying to keep her toes from freezing off, her eyes immediately began to water when she realized why the smell of their dinner was so familiar. 

"Are those latkes?" she asked, her voice soft and sentimental. The menorah that glowed in the kitchen window illuminated her face in a way that made Ellie's heart skip a beat. She hadn't thought about the emotional repercussions of this specific meal - especially with a pregnant, _very_ pregnant Dina.

Ellie stacked the potato pancakes on a plate as carefully as she could. Admittedly, she had never made nor eaten them before - she'd found a kosher cookbook while rifling through an abandoned home a few weeks prior during patrol. The food looked good, and only after returning home with it did Dina explain the importance of it. 

She'd be lying if she hadn't patted herself on the back for the find. 

"I've been just dying for potatoes lately," Dina said excitedly as she sat down at the table, eyes wide as Ellie placed a plate in front of her. She returned with the latkes and two sides - homemade yogurt and apple sauce - before taking a seat beside Dina, whose sigh came out as more of a whimper than anything. 

Ellie glanced over on high alert. Had she fucked something up? "I did my best with the yogurt and the apple sauce," she immediately began rambling, flustered as her cheeks flushed all the way to her ears. "I'm definitely no chef, but-"

"Ellie, it's perfect," Dina stopped her with a squeeze to her knee under the table. "Thank you." She grunted as the baby unexpectedly kicked her in the ribs before laughing off the discomfort. "I guess baby's ready for potatoes, too."

-

The following winter, Dina and Ellie had been parents for nearly a year. 

Where had time gone? The first few months were a bit excruciating - no sleep, no rest, no time to tend to the house or the farm. The world revolved around their newly born son, who was JJ after Jesse and Joel, but who they'd both taken to lovingly referring to as potato. 

Ellie was in the kitchen again, making latkes as Dina held JJ next to the menorah. "Don't touch," she told him sweetly, instead offering the fingers of her free hand when he reached for the small flames. "Just look." As he babbled, Ellie could see the loving smile that pulled at her partner's lips in her periphery. "Yeah, that's neat, huh?"

Faintly, in the background, an old holiday record turned on the turntable. Dina had insisted, and Ellie couldn't resist the way that her heart responded to the sight of Dina singing and dancing to _Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer_ with their little spud. She had never known a proper, old world holiday - neither had D. So they made of their holidays what they wanted to. 

That was one redeeming quality about post-outbreak life. As the world had collapsed, so it had grown over to begin again.

"Can we even feed him latkes?" Ellie called into the living room, where Dina bounced JJ around as he clapped and giggled cheerfully. 

"Why would we not?" she asked, still moving about to keep him entertained.

Ellie shut off the burner and walked over, expressionless. Dina slowed her movements with their son, furrowing her brow in concern. 

"...He's a potato," Ellie said as seriously as she possibly could. "...He'll be a cannibal."

The two stared at one another for a moment before Dina blinked. How had she not seen that one coming? She slapped at Ellie's shoulder and rolled her eyes as the taller of the two wandered back to the kitchen, engulfed in laughter.

"I'm glad _you_ think you're funny," Dina called to her. "At least someone does."

Dina turned to JJ with a smile, stroking his chubby little cheeks. "Your mom thinks she's so funny." JJ cooed. "She isn't, but we love her, so I guess we can keep her."

-

Dina and Ellie had spent weeks rewiring and tinkering with an old radio that had a slot to play cassette tapes. Ellie had found it when she'd climbed up into the loft in the barn, tucked away in a corner as if someone had been stowing it away. Ellie wasn't entirely tech-savvy, so the majority of her time was invested in cheering Dina on and taking care of chores around the house and farm with JJ strapped to her chest.

"Your mama's too smart for her own good," she told him once the radio was restored to functional condition. "We better run before she turns us into robots."

Dina shook her head and scoffed. She felt like she did that a lot after meeting Ellie, but somehow, it had only gotten worse after they had become parents.

"You should show him some of your tapes," she told Ellie. "I'm sure they'd amuse him."

After JJ's evening bath, while Dina was curled up on the couch and fully engrossed in a book, Ellie sat on the floor of the nursery with her little potato in her lap, the newly repaired radio in front of them. All of the buttons and knobs were of intense interest to JJ of course, who groaned with frustration when his mama held him back from fiddling. 

"Cool your jets, kid," she told him, shuffling his hair around as she carefully set the tape she'd chosen for them into the slot. She took his hand and helped him press the "play" button, handing him an old rocket plush she'd found on her museum trip with Joel all those years ago.

She hadn't listened to the tape since his passing. But if she was going to relive this, she wanted it to be a memory she passed on to her son. A memory she'd shared with someone who had become like a father to her, whether she'd wanted him to or not.

_"30 seconds and counting. Astronauts report it feels good. T-minus 25 seconds."_

Ellie closed her eyes the same way she had on her sixteenth birthday, gently bouncing JJ around on her lap to emulate the shaking of a rocket preparing for liftoff and to hide the inevitable tremble of her hands.

"Ready to go to space, potato?" she asked him against his ear, and he giggled at the sensation, clapping his hands together happily, still holding the rocket firm in his grip.

_"20 seconds and counting."_

Ellie thought for a moment that she could smell the familiar smell of Joel in the air. She opened her eyes, startled, but took a few deep breaths to calm herself. Her eyes fell upon his brown leather jacket, hanging in the nursery closet now after a minor leak in the room downstairs. 

Maybe Joel was coming to space with them, too.

_"T-minus 15 seconds, guidance is internal."_

Ellie swallowed past the lump in her throat. Now wasn't the time to hurt. Now was the time to embrace the process of healing, to create new memories with the family that she loved so dearly. The family that Joel would have found a way to love even more.

She took another deep breath to steady herself as she began to shuffle JJ around a bit more while the final countdown began.

"We're getting ready," she told him excitedly. "Ready, spud?"

Ellie knew that he had no idea what was happening - he was a baby yet, just enjoying the playful company of his parent. But she couldn't help but hope that perhaps this memory would be engrained into him. Maybe one day, she'd take him to that same museum.

_"12, 11, 10, 9, ignition sequence starts."_

She held onto his sides and fell back carefully, laying him with his back against her front as she attempted to recreate the sounds of a rocket. "Pssshhhhhhhh!"

JJ squealed.

" _6, 5, 4 - "_

"3, 2, 1," Ellie said in unison with the man on the recording, jumbling her little astronaut around for a moment before using the sound of the takeoff to assist in the experience, sitting upright and pushing to her feet, lifting up a still shrieking JJ and soaring him around the room. "Liftoff! We have liftoff!"

 _"32 minutes past the hour, liftoff on Apollo 11!_ "

Ellie could feel that memory of disappearing into darkness, into the unknown of outer space, swelling in her chest as she zoomed her son around the nursery in the dim light. He held onto the rocket ship the same way she would have, giggling and babbling as they broke through the hemisphere.

"Ground control, coming in."

Ellie turned to find Dina standing in the doorway of JJ's bedroom, an amused smirk on her lips, her arms folded across her chest. "You know that space potato has to go to bed right, Captain?"

Ellie scoffed, a look of disbelief staining her features as she lowered the space potato back to Earth, cradling him in her arm. "Captain? I'm a _Commander_ , excuse you."

Dina would never understand Ellie's fascination with space. But her fascination with Ellie was enough to accept it for what it was. It also made her an incredibly valuable source of knowledge for their son, who was babbling to the rocket ship plush he was now holding right in front of his face.

She'd never be able to say that Ellie wasn't a good parent.

"Sorry, _commander._ But the space potato needs to hit the hay. Stat."

Ellie looked down at him as Dina came over and snaked an arm around her waist, pressing a gentle kiss against Ellie's temple. "So he was the first honorary potato in space today, huh?" she asked.

"Sure was," Ellie said, beaming with pride. Dina knew it wasn't mock pride, either. "Backup Commander Space Potato has returned to Earth safely."

Dina chuckled. The outer space business could stay an Ellie and JJ thing. 

As Ellie placed him in his crib, she moved to take the plush away, but he squeezed it tightly to his chest, whining as soon as she so much as tried. Dina's brows lifted with amusement. "That's your son," she told Ellie, spinning the planetary mobile overhead. They both leaned past the guard of the crib and pressed kisses against his forehead, wishing him goodnight. 

"Welcome to Earth," Ellie whispered to him. "Goodnight, spud."


End file.
